Ignoring Women's Health? A Pro-Life Response

The other day, I posted a short piece by Patrick Kelly from the Knights of Columbus that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The piece was timed to coincide with weekend Roe v. Wade commemorations, and it celebrated the magnificent contributions pregnancy resource centers have made toward promoting life and supporting pregnant women over the years – a compassionate, charitable work that predates the 1973 Supreme Court decision. 

In my public post, I included the following pull-quote from Kelly's article regarding the centers: 

The Guttmacher Institute...complains they are “typically staffed by volunteers and employees who lack medical training and licensure.” It’s a strange criticism from those for whom a “successful” medical procedure always ends in the death of a human being.

In response, a friend of mine made this (public) comment:

Of course, WSJ ignores the health of the women with that crack. I guess for them being pro life really does stop at birth - at which point they are pro chaos.

Here's what I wrote in reply.
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Hey, friend. Normally I wouldn't respond to comments I find offensive, but this one, really, is beyond the pale. 

To begin with, the article is by Patrick Kelly from the Knights of Columbus, not the WSJ editorial board. That's important because the K of C are directly and extensively involved in supporting and underwriting the good efforts of crisis pregnancy centers across the country (and around the world, I think). I'm a proud member of the Knights and happy to be associated with their charitable efforts.  

Second, and more importantly, if you actually spoke with anyone who was thoroughly pro-life or familiarized yourself with their work, you'd know that it's frankly silly to accuse them of ignoring women's health. "The people who work at these centers serve the whole person—medically, financially, emotionally and spiritually," Kelly writes in his piece. "That’s something no abortion clinic can do, and it helps explain why their numbers are dwindling while the number of pregnancy resource centers grows." By working tirelessly to provide pregnant moms with what they need to continue their pregnancies and care for their babies after delivery, crisis pregnancy centers are most definitely committed to maternal health as well as defending preborn life. 

Still, I'm willing to grant you the benefit of the doubt, and I'm guessing your comment is related to the myth that abortion is sometimes required to preserve a woman's health. That's a false notion that's rooted in a shortsighted ethical perspective. Consider this statement from the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists:

When extreme medical emergencies that threaten the life of the mother arise..., AAPLOG believes in "treatment to save the mother’s life," including premature delivery if that is indicated — obviously with the patient’s informed consent. This is NOT "abortion to save the mother’s life." We are treating two patients, the mother and the baby, and every reasonable attempt to save the baby’s life would also be a part of our medical intervention. We acknowledge that, in some such instances, the baby would be too premature to survive.

Anyway, maybe that sounds like so much sophistry and ethical mumbo-jumbo, but you can hardly accuse those who embrace that stance of "ignoring" women's health. Pro-life people are just that: Pro-life. The baby's life. The mom's life. The life of the elderly, the infirm, the brain-injured. The poor, the marginalized, the incarcerated, the immigrant. "I have set before you life and death," God tells the Israelites, "therefore choose life" (Deut. 30.19). It's a command that pro-life folks (like me) try to embody and promote every day. Sometimes we do it well; sometimes not. Even so, we're always striving to foster a world in which killing is never required to solve problems. Never. 

So, please talk to some pro-life people. Hell, talk to me. I'll be happy to tell you how I see all this stuff. But, please, friend, don't accuse me and those who think like me of ignoring women's health just because we are opposed to killing babies in the womb. That's just foolishness.
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Our Local Pro-Life Guardian Angel

Last Thursday night, St. Joseph County Right to Life held its 27th Annual Right to Life Benefit Dinner. "The event was a huge success," read a follow-up email from the organization, "raising funds that are critical in our continuing mission of sharing the sanctity of life through education, advocacy, outreach, and prayer." At the end of the evening, my son and I had the privilege of making the following fundraising pitch.
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It’s always a joy for me and my wife, Nancy, to come to this banquet every year, and tonight is a special joy because we have two of our kids – our youngest – with us for the first time: our son, Nicholas, and our daughter, Katharine. As if that weren’t enough, Nick and I also have this honor of coming up here together, father and son, to ask you for…money.

But before we get to money, we want to talk a minute about guardian angels.

We all know about guardian angels, and if you’re Catholic, you’ve been praying to your guardian angel since you were a tot – which means you’ve also probably taught your own tots the same guardian angel prayer that your parents taught you. “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love entrusts me here, ever this day be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide.”

But not just Catholics. Other Christian traditions acknowledge the role of personal heavenly guardians based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 18: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones,” he says. “For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” Jewish tradition incorporates a similar idea, and we read of an angel, Raphael, coming to the aid of the wayfarer Tobiah in the Book of Tobit.

OK, so we have guardian angels. What does that have to do with Right to Life and money? I’ll tell you. A week ago, I was in my car and the radio was on. At the top of the hour, the local news included a brief reference to Whole Woman’s Health Alliance getting the nod from an Indianapolis judge to proceed with their plans for a west-side chemical abortion center – bad news for the babies, bad news for the moms, bad news for the West Side and our entire community. But the bad news was balanced with a bit of hope: “If the Indiana Health Department doesn’t object,” the announcer said, “the order will become final on October 2.”

October 2nd – I perked up. Did you? For us Catholics, it’s the feast of the Guardian Angels – a high holy day in Catholic families with young kids. It’s the day we thank God for his provision in our lives as we celebrate the personal angelic companions he gave us – especially since we grown-ups probably don’t think about them much of the rest of the year.

But they’re always there, as the prayer says, enlightening us to truth, protecting us from harm, and guiding us forward. And that’s exactly the kind of work that St. Joseph County Right to Life has been doing since 1972 – a year before the passage of Roe v. Wade. Think of it: Even before abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court, St. Joe County Right to Life was all set, in place, and ready to act as our community’s guardian angel on behalf of the preborn.

You can bet that’s what they’ll be doing between now and October 2nd with regards to that new abortion clinic. St. Joe County Right to Life will be educating, advocating, and leading the charge to stop that place from opening if at all possible. And all while they continue doing everything else they do in our community – some things visible, like the billboards for the Women’s Care Center, and some thing less visible and behind the scenes.

Yet, unlike our personal guardian angels, who are spirits and don’t need income, our communal, pro-life guardian angel does. St. Joe County Right to Life has expenses just like any other organization, and it relies on our contributions to make ends meet. So, please, on behalf of all those guarded by St. Joe County Right to Life, be as generous as you can.
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In the Wake of Parkland

Here’s a post from my friend Mike:

Curious question, with no comment desired other than indicating your response. Debate is not welcome on this thread. What do you think is the primary reason for mass shootings in the US?   

A. Gun availability and proliferation 

B. Violence in entertainment 

C. The breakdown of the family 

D. Lack of mental health resources 

E. Other (please specify)

Mike got scores of answers, if not hundreds (I stopped counting after a while), and they ranged all over the place, including many who wrote in some version of “All the above.” So did I – here it is:

Abortion, euthanasia, mercy killing, capital punishment, targeted killing, drone warfare. We're immersed in the culture of death, and we've all grown accustomed to solving problems by killing people. So, yes, all of the above (A, C, and D especially), but also a zeitgeist that implicitly condones destroying human life as an acceptable means to reach a variety of ends.

That was on Friday. On Saturday morning, I snagged my Wall Street Journal from the curb and located Peggy Noonan’s column: “The Parkland Massacre and the Air We Breathe.” In it, Noonan articulated and expanded on the same point I was trying to make in response to Mike’s question – a point the column’s sub-title succinctly summarizes: “What’s gone wrong with our culture that produces such atrocities? It’s a very long list.”

Noonan answers her own question with another question: “What has happened the past 40 years or so to produce a society so ill at ease with itself, so prone to violence?” Her list overlaps my own, and she adds some more: “The family blew up—divorce, unwed childbearing. Fatherless sons. Fatherless daughters, too. Poor children with no one to love them. The internet flourished. Porn proliferated. Drugs, legal and illegal.” Noonan speculates that all this cultural upheaval is responsible for a pervasive moral illness in our body politic. “A nation has an atmosphere. It has air it breathes in each day,” she writes. “America’s air looks clean but there are toxins in it, and they’re making the least defended and protected of us sick.”

What caught my attention, however, was the 40 year figure – why forty? A quick scout around the internet finds other retrospectives since Ash Wednesday’s horrific events in Florida utilizing a similar reckoning, more or less. Some go back to just 1999; others go back to the mid-1980s; few go back further than 1978 – that 40 year mark mentioned by Noonan. In fact, according to CNN, only two of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history occurred before then: Austin in 1966 and Camden in 1949.

Why? What happened around 1978?

Consider: Abortion on demand was legalized in this country following the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Since then, abortion on demand has become part of the fabric of our cultural consensus – that is, a medicalized form of killing has become a normalized means of addressing challenging human dilemmas.

And it's not just an American phenomenon. A friend recently gave me an essay by actress Patricia Heaton about Iceland’s “success” in eliminating Down syndrome. Heaton astutely observes that Iceland “was not, in fact, eliminating Down syndrome. They were just killing everyone who has it.”

So, without excluding questions of easy access to guns, lack of mental health resources, and the breakdown of traditional mores, here’s my own curious and honest inquiry: Could it be that we’ve just gotten used to killing as a way of life, especially since Roe v. Wade? Could it be that we’re raising one generation after another with that mindset?

And, if that's the case, what can we do about it? What ought we to do?
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Unintentional Irony: NPR, Abortion, and Maternal Devotion

I listen to National Public Radio all the time (as my kids can attest) because it’s informative, well produced, and convenient – radio is a terrific medium for those on the go and, what’s more, it’s free!

However, like most mainstream media outlets, NPR leans pretty far to the left, especially when it comes to social issues, and particularly concerning abortion. Probably they’d deny such editorial leanings, and they’d point to the numbers – like, maybe, the balanced amount of airtime they grant representatives from both the pro-life and pro-choice camps. But you can’t listen to NPR long without picking up on a subtle emphasis in tone and language that betrays their pro-choice bias. What's more, pro-choice adherents and their positions are rarely criticized, while pro-life spokeswomen are frequently patronized by their on-air NPR hosts.

This despite the fact that pro-lifers are speaking up for a marginalized and persecuted class of humanity that can’t speak up for itself – the very kind of sub-group that NPR likes to draw attention to and defend. Even so, sometimes the NPR editors make programming decisions that buttress the pro-life cause, despite what seems to be their intention otherwise.

Case in point: Two unrelated stories that appeared on two different shows on the same day a couple weeks back. In the afternoon, there was a story on All Things Considered about pro-choice pioneers in Chicago that provided illicit abortions prior to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. The underground group went by the name “Jane,” and they developed an elaborate, clandestine system to evade the law, connect with women who sought abortion, and then perform the procedur themselves – despite a lack of medical training. The ATC segment featured early Jane enthusiasts, including Martha Scott:

Scott says she performed hundreds of abortions. It's a relatively simple procedure, but she acknowledges that there were risks to what they were doing. Some clients ended up in the emergency room; some had to undergo hysterectomies. “You're messing around inside somebody else's body. It’s not necessarily given that you won’t do harm,” Scott says. “It wasn't perfect, by any means. But we were dealing with women who really didn't have other options.”

By itself, it’s a typical NPR abortion puff piece, and it paints the pro-choice scofflaws in the best possible light. The members of Jane are what NPR’s largely progressive listening audience would call abortion heroines, after all, who risked jail time, unemployment, and social ostracism in order to facilitate the termination of unwanted children. Yet, in all the years (decades) that I’ve been listening to Public Radio, I can’t recall a single comparable story lionizing the peaceful pro-life activists who risked all the same things in order to bring pregnant women alternative, life-affirming choices.

Even so, NPR itself highlighted that alternative perspective earlier in the same day that the Jane story appeared. It was a Story Corps segment during NPR's Morning Edition that featured a conversation between April Gibson and her teenage son, Gregory. When Gibson got pregnant as an unmarried teen, she apparently didn’t consider abortion an option – or else she couldn’t. “I just took care of you,” she tells Gregory in the Story Corps segment. “I did what I was supposed to do.” Maybe she didn’t really have other options; maybe she didn’t have folks like Scott and her ilk proffering cheap termination services.

From an NPR point of view, that sounds like an injustice: Gibson shouldn’t have been compelled to any baby-related “supposed to do.” I’m guessing All Things Considered might’ve preferred to relate Gibson’s story as an cautionary tale: “See what happens when women don’t have choice? They have to take care of a baby.”

But Gibson tells her own story with confidence and joy, and she makes it plain that she has no regrets. “I couldn't believe what people told me about myself or about ‘those people’ like me,” she tells her son – and us. “This is my baby, and I love him, and I can feel something. It’s not a fairy tale, it's not a failure. It's just a process, and now we're here, 16 years later.”

It was a moving testimony, and I couldn't help thinking about Gibson and Gregory later in the day as I listened to the story about Jane. All those hundreds of abortions that Martha Scott and her friends performed, and the hundreds of Gregorys who perished as a result. Their moms might’ve been convinced that they were justified in resorting to a dangerous permanent solution in order to address whatever crises they were in at the time, but there’s no doubt that they also missed out on what Gibson calls “a process” – that is, the mysterious unfolding of lived life with all its tragedies and sorrows, its hopes and possibilities.

Gibson doesn’t mention abortion in her conversation with Gregory – she might even be pro-choice, for all I know – but it’s very clear that she’s glad he’s in the world. No doubt, all those many women who took advantage of Jane's abortion services were facing excruciating circumstances, or else they wouldn't chosen such an extreme solution. But how many of them had a chance to talk with somebody like April Gibson, who could've assured them that there was still hope? The hardships she endured as a single mom, the doubts and sense of failure – no fairy tale, as she says – were clearly well worth it. It’s an outcome she could’ve never predicted at the time of her pregnancy, but that makes her decision to “just take care” of her baby – to do what she was “supposed to do” – all the more valiant.

Happily, it's a valiancy that Gregory himself both recognizes and cherishes. As he told his mom at the end of their conversation, “You’re just the greatest person that I ever know. And I just want to be like you.”

Me, too. Thanks for your heroism, April, and for sharing your story – and your son – with the world.
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Public Comment: RU-486

The St. Joseph County Council met on Tuesday evening, December 5. During the public comment period at the close of the meeting, about 30 healthcare workers and concerned citizens spoke out against the possibility that a new facility would open in South Bend offering chemical abortion (RU-486). My contribution was a brief review of maternal physiological risks associated with this heinous practice.
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All medical interventions are accompanied by risk, and we accept those risks when they’re outweighed by the potential benefits. Even a simple Band-Aid can present the risk of injury for those with very fragile skin, or even an allergic reaction, but we don’t think about it too much because the risk is so small.

The same rule applies to medications – like a simple dose of Tylenol, that we take without much thought because the risks are so minimal. But we can be allergic to Tylenol and other drugs, or we can experience a variety of adverse reactions if those drugs interact with our bodies in unexpected ways.

Most drugs have been used and/or studied so long that their side effects and risks are well known. Such is the case with mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs that together make up RU-486, the chemical (or medical) abortion procedure under consideration tonight.

Among the side effects that women who take these drugs may experience are these:

• Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea
  
• Significant cramping and pelvic pain
  
• Insomnia, anxiety, and dizziness
  
• Headaches, along with back and leg pain

More serious complications, while uncommon, include the possibility of:

• Heavy bleeding, lasting day, weeks, and even months, and sometimes requiring blood transfusions
  
• Large uterine blood clots or even incomplete expulsion of fetal remains from the uterus
  
• Infection, including the possibility of sepsis (or whole body infection), which can be deadly
  
• Additional complications associated with an undetected ectopic (or tubal) pregnancy, which would be a medical emergency 

Proponents of medical abortion argue that these risks, even the serious ones, can be handled if and when they arise, but keep in mind that women only receive the first dose of the two-dose regimen in a clinical setting. She’ll return home after that – or, if she’s from out of town, to a motel room – to take that second drug, and then face any complications or problems on her own.

Consider, too, that these possible side effects and risks are grave enough that women must be warned about them and sign an informed consent before receiving the abortion drugs. Like I said, all medical interventions have risks, and we have to weigh risks against benefits.

But the risks associated with medical abortion are high, too high, even if you want to argue that abortion is a “benefit.” RU-486 is a dangerous regimen, and it has no place in our community.
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Dear #Pro-Choice

Dear pro-choice friend,

I got to my office this morning and discovered your message on my white board. I’m assuming you took the time to read the various postings on my door and drew the conclusion that I’m passionately pro-life – and you were right about that. It would’ve been hard to conclude otherwise, especially given the prominent “#DefundPlannedParenthood” sign right above the message board. So, for what it’s worth, I’m grateful that you did me the honor of standing there, scanning my signage, and giving it all some thought. That’s the beginning of dialogue. That’s what leads to increased mutual understanding and respect.

Unfortunately, your consideration of my evident pro-life position led you to opt for a less than respectful response. You could’ve left me a note asking for more information on why I’m against abortion. You could’ve come back during my posted office hours to introduce yourself and share with me your reasons for supporting abortion rights.

Instead, you snagged my dry-erase marker and wrote “#ProChoice” in big letters. Why? What were you hoping to accomplish? In a sense, what you did amounts to vandalism. Yes, it’s true that I invite folks to leave messages on my door by hanging the white board and marker there, but clearly your intent here was aggressive and so unwelcome. If I came across your door plastered with pro-abortion messages, how would you feel if I left a “#Pro-Life” scrawl there? Wouldn’t it make you mad? Wouldn’t you interpret it as a form of assault?

My initial reaction wasn’t anger, however, but mirth. I saw your message and laughed out loud – how ironic! You were declaring yourself (anonymously) to be on the side of choice, but you totally overrode my choice with regards to the kinds of messages I want to appear on my door.

But my mirth quickly turned into sadness. Here we are, you and me, at an institution of higher learning, and we totally missed an opportunity to expand our minds by learning from someone with whom we disagree. Frankly, I feel ripped off rather than offended. I’m bummed that you deprived us both of the chance to grow as human beings. I doubt I could’ve persuaded you to change your point of view, and I’m absolutely certain that you wouldn’t have changed mine, but I would’ve welcomed the occasion to meet and chat with you. Believe it or not, I would’ve listened, really listened. And, of course, I would’ve expected you to listen to me. Then we could’ve parted in peace – maybe not as friends, but at least as friendly acquaintances. Who knows? We might’ve even agreed to talk some more another time.

Anyway, consider this an invitation. I’m leaving your “#Pro-Choice” message on my door in hopes that you’ll see it, that you’ll be surprised it's still there, and that you’ll approach to discover this letter to you. Won’t you please come talk to me? Like I said, I’ll listen, but I’ll want you to listen to me in return.
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We're All Special Needs Children

“It’s not special or different or extraordinary needs that make the difference. Aren’t we all ‘special-needs children,’ after all? Addressing Nick’s particular needs took on urgency and required a steeper learning curve than some of our other kids. But the joys are the same. The gift is the same.”

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Excerpted from Jeannie Ewing's "Overcoming Tragedy: The joy of having special-needs children," which was originally published in Catholic Digest (February 2017).

A Bad Plan

The headline above Heather Cope’s Oct. 15 Voice letter – “Youths need accurate info about sex” – is true enough, but it’s an open question whether her employer, Planned Parenthood, is the best one to provide it.

Planned Parenthood is not, as Cope would have us believe, in the helping business; it's in the contraception and abortion business. Although it operates as a charitable organization, Planned Parenthood Federation of America managed a $35.2 million “excess of revenue over expenses” last year, and it has realized similar “excesses” every year since 1987.

Even if one overlooks this enormous revenue stream, it is hard to ignore Planned Parenthood’s passionate commitment to their mission to undermining traditional, family-oriented sexual mores and to ensuring unfettered access to abortion for any reason and at any time. When Planned Parenthood representatives suggest resources about sexuality and contraception, we should be on our guard and question the impartiality of the proffered advice.

Case in point: Cope presents statistics regarding the sexual practices of teens, and her only remedy is to push condoms and urge better access to the Planned Parenthood version of sex education. Conspicuous by its absence is any hint of a recommendation that chastity and self-control be promoted among our teens. Parents who are truly interested in the long-term welfare of their children would do well to avoid Planned Parenthood’s advice, and turn to places like Sex Respect or Rock for Life for support.

In a sex-obsessed world, our youth need reinforcement in their struggles to choose purity and abstinence, not encouragement to choose immediate gratification and excess.
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This letter appeared in the "Voice of the People" section of the South Bend Tribune on November 6, 2005.

Real Life

Originally posted on Facebook, July 12, 2013. 

Snowboarding is a world utterly foreign to me, but I'm intimately acquainted with Down syndrome.

My son, Nick, has Down's, and his very life is a window on a world of freedom and joy that I'll never know—except through him. Thank God he's here.

I was reminded of that when I read Dorothy Rabinowitz' WSJ review of The Crash Reel, a documentary about snowboarder Kevin Pearce, his brain injury, and his recovery.

Kevin's story sounds compelling in itself, but what especially struck me was the portrait presented of Kevin's family—especially his brother, David:

David is a riveting presence. He's the family's Down syndrome child, now a young man—urgent, full of passion for his adored athlete brother, the raw voice of anguish over Kevin's accident that the other members of the family try to contain in themselves.

This is what we parents of Down's kids know; it's what the world that aborts them at a rate of 9 out of 10 needs to hear.

Is Down's a piece of cake? No. Here's more from the Pearces:

Mia, Kevin's mother, recalls her initial fear—soon dispatched—that she might not be able to deal with a Down syndrome child. David, that child now nearly a man, reveals details of the unhappiness he feels when he thinks about his condition, a description impressive in its eloquence.

Unhappiness about his condition, but better off dead? Hardly. Life is hard and filled with challenges, but killing to eliminate challenges not only doesn't work—it's terribly, painfully counterproductive. Sometimes, more often than not, the very challenges we wish to avoid turn out to be priceless opportunities that lead to new life. We just can't see it yet.

And when it comes to Down syndrome in particular? I pray for a world that, like Mia Pearce, will dispatch fear instead of persons.

The Disappearance of Down Syndrome

Originally posted on Facebook, June 28, 2008.

If you can recognize the characteristic physical features associated with Down Syndrome (DS), try this experiment: Next time you're out in a crowd, take a look around and count how many folks with DS you can identify. How many? How old?

Chances are you wont see many, and the ones you see will be well into their 30s and 40s or beyond—an observation that would be consistent with documented demographic realities.

Why is this? What happened in the early '70s that so radically decreased the number of babies born with DS? Was there some kind of fantastic medical discovery back then that aided the treatment of this condition in the womb?

Guess again.

In a beautiful yet discomforting piece in the Wall Street Journal recently ("A Life Worth Living," 6/27/2008), Christine Rosen alludes to the real reason:

Between 80% and 90% of women who find out they are carrying a child with the chromosomal abnormality (which can be tested using amniocentesis) choose to abort. A Harvard medical student who surveyed 1,000 women who were pregnant with Down Syndrome babies reported that many were urged by their doctors to terminate their pregnancies; one woman's physician told her that her child would "never be able to read, write or count change." This at a time when new developments in medicine have nearly doubled the average life span of people who have the condition to 49 from 25 years.

So, it wasn't a medical advance that led to fewer babies born with DS, but rather the Supreme Court's decision in 1973 to make abortion legal in all 50 states. In other words, we're eliminating a disorder by eliminating the patient.

All abortions are abominable crimes, but killing preborn babies because they are viewed as "defective" is particularly revolting—especially when it becomes the norm. Again, Christine Rosen:

As a culture, we have made what Amy Laura Hall of Duke University Divinity School calls a "democratic calculus of worth" regarding Down Syndrome. And that calculus has resulted in a society hostile to people who refuse to make the culturally acceptable choice of ridding themselves of a disabled child before she is born.

Can we continue to call "civilized" a society that tolerates, protects, and even promotes this heinous practice? Or has our "teetering on the edge of collapse" finally shifted into a moral free fall?

Pray for an end to abortion. Work for its end. Protest accordingly. Vote accordingly.

And when you see a baby with DS say a prayer of thanks. That baby's very existence means that we haven't hit rock bottom just yet.

The Random Scourge of Violence

Scourging is having a renaissance—at least in the prayer petitions on Sunday mornings: “…for an end to the scourge of abortion, we pray to the Lord,” and “…for an end to the scourge of war, we pray to the Lord.” 

Such uses of the term “scourge” have a good precedent in the Church. Pope John Paul II used it in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae in his plea for an end to all violence: “Today this proclamation is especially pressing because of the extraordinary increase and gravity of threats to the life of individuals and peoples, especially where life is weak and defenceless. In addition to the ancient scourges of poverty, hunger, endemic diseases, violence and war, new threats are emerging on an alarmingly vast scale” (EV 3). 

As if to buttress and expand his predecessor’s appeal, Pope Benedict XVI himself used the word in his 2007 Easter Urbi et Orbi address: “How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world!... I am thinking of the scourge of hunger, of incurable diseases, of terrorism and kidnapping of people, of the thousand faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the exploitation of persons.” 

But what exactly does “scourge” mean, especially when used in these ways?

Caravaggio, Flagellazione di Cristo (ca. 1607)

Technically, a scourge is a whip that was utilized in the ancient world for punishment and torture. Most scourges had numerous lashes, and frequently each lash had a knot or some hard article attached to its end. As a result, scourging generally resulted in the literal flailing of a victim’s back, with each lash catching and then ripping away chunks of flesh. 

The most famous scourging in history is the one Jesus endured—an event we recall and contemplate every time we pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. This violent humiliation of our Lord at the hands of his captors is recorded in all four Gospels, and yet it is passed over as if it were but a prelude to the execution that was to follow. Nevertheless, it was unquestionably an excruciating ordeal, as every stroke of the whip brought new injury and introduced new pain to random areas of the Lord’s body.

And it’s this randomness of the scourge’s assault that makes it a particularly apt metaphor for both war and abortion, for both strike down human life without regard to identity or threat. This is absolutely true in the case of abortion—a reality Pope John Paul emphasized in his encyclical: 

The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder and, in particular, when we consider the specific elements involved. The one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenceless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby's cries and tears (EV58). 

The anonymity and complete vulnerability of abortion’s primary victim highlights the act’s utter irrationality. The baby—a gift from God and an icon of hope, no matter what the trying circumstances of her conception—is destroyed as if it were a rabid animal or a knife-wielding attacker. 

The insanity of modern warfare and terrorism is equally unnerving, particularly with regards to the comparable anonymity and vulnerability of its youngest victims. Consider the sons and daughters of our own courageous soldiers who will be orphaned as the result of war’s random violence. Consider, too, the sons and daughters of countless combatants and innocent civilians who will be left similarly stranded when parents are caught in the line of fire. Not to be forgotten are the high number of fatalities among the young themselves when the tides of violence sweep into war-torn areas, engulfing entire communities and often for no strategic purpose. 

Too easily do we dismiss such killings as “collateral damage” and “the cost of war.” Every human being is a child of God, created in His own image and extravagantly loved by Him. If a country’s efforts to secure its own interests and safety cause it to relativize the inestimable worth of human life, then that country is engaged in a morally dubious enterprise at best—a reprehensible and evil offense at worst. An army that heedlessly slaughters innocent children in the course of pursuing military objectives cannot possibly be fulfilling the will of God, no matter what justifications are offered. The Catechism, quoting Vatican II, puts it this way: 

The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. “The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties.” Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely. Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions (CCC 2312-13). 

The scourge—universally feared in the ancient world, widely embraced in the modern world via the Culture of Death. Next time we meditate on the Scourging at the Pillar, let’s remember in a special way the victims of random violence throughout the world. Let’s pray, too, for an end to all war, especially the war on the unborn.
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A version of this story appeared in Sign of Peace, Catholic Peace Fellowship.